Evil be my Good
by Cordeliers Club
Summary: Grantaire sells his soul to the devil. As you might imagine, things pretty much go downhill from there.


A WORD BEFORE READING…of course I will want another word with you after reading, but. Some cautionary stuff:

This story, it is a Faustian story. It is not ashamed of that, and it draws greedily on any and all existing Fausts. Starring, specifically, Goethe's Faust (minus Mephistopheles' bet with God), and Berlioz's and Gounod's operas. When I wrote this, I was imagining John Relyea as Mephistopheles. And you can too!

I've also borrowed just the tiniest, tiniest bit from Balzac; you will see where, and if you don't, it's not at all important. I literally just used one of his guys for a second.

A final thing I need to front is how silly this is. This is very, very silly. It is not meant seriously, even within the nonserious context of Les Mis fanfiction. I do not think Grantaire sold his soul to anyone. But wouldn't it be fun if…

**Evil be my Good**

**"**_So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear_, _Farewell Remorse_: _all Good to me is lost_; _Evil be thou my Good"_

_-Paradise Lost  
_

Grantaire went to the Musain only once that week, on a Thursday. He regretted it almost immediately.

It was a damp day, with a dilute and pale light. Once inside the warmly-lit café, he discovered his waistcoat was a different blue than he'd thought when putting it on.

"Grantaire, my dear man, come here!" Courfeyrac spun around a chair for Grantaire.

Grantaire sat, putting his hat on the table.

"Courfeyrac! Have you attested to your presence at lecture?"

"I've just returned. The way to do it, I found, is to leave your hat at the table. This ruse allows you to come and go as you wish, as long as it's somewhere you can show up without a hat. As luck would have it, Grantaire, I was looking for you, for which I require no hat. I've been haunting this table for weeks in the hope of glimpsing you," Courfeyrac inclined his head, grinning.

"You could have had flowers sent," said Grantaire.

"I'm well-informed. Anyway, I have a favor to ask you. Tomorrow night, Madame de Taillandier—"

"—The aged mistress!"

Courfeyrac grimaced. "Madame de Taillandier, the aged mistress, is giving a ball, which I must grudgingly attend. I'm to bring some of the _jeunes charmants_, as she contrives to think of my friends. I imagine her purpose with them is decorative. I'd like you to come."

"Your infatuation with me blinds you, Courfeyrac, to the fact that I'm not decorative."

Courfeyrac's grin turned sly. "Too true. I need you to do your utmost—" Courfeyrac interrupted himself abruptly to peer across the table "—hold on, let me look at your waistcoat."

Grantaire obligingly parted his lapels.

"Morbleu, old chap, and I intend the pun. Is that a turquoise damask?"

"It is. Inadequate light this morning."

"God, I think I recall something similar on Prouvaire. You'll wear that."

"This waistcoat?"

"To the ball. With that coat, if you please, and the hat. Anyway, you must do your utmost to behave awfully, offend everyone, and, if you are my friend, spill a red wine on her little white dog."

Grantaire leaned back, putting an arm on the table, to regard Courfeyrac with some surprise. "I take it you are finished with her?"

"Entirely, and I need to break with her on her own terms and soon, before I fall asleep when we're alone, or something casually dreadful like that."

"So I'm to be so abominable—"

"That she will be unable to maintain our association, yes. Do you know, you're the only man for the task, Grantaire. I thought about asking Bahorel, but he would never agree to such an _uncharitable _errand."

Grantaire thought about it. "I can't see Bahorel declining an opportunity to get a wine stain on a little dog."

"He's actually quite averse to these sorts of stratagems, moreso than he is averse to little dogs. I don't see why. Madame would do worse to me in a minute, if I ceased to entertain. Which we both know is impossible, so of course I say this Iarguendo/I. At the end of the day, Grantaire, you're the only one both sufficiently loutish and sufficiently amoral for my task."

"I'm glad my qualities have employment," said Grantaire.

"Haven't they just. Anyway, I hear Monsieur de Rastignac will be there, and so it will be an entertaining party for long enough. But I've been far too long here! I must to lecture to rescue my hat, and thence to my tailor—I shall call on you tomorrow night. The waistcoat, Grantaire, don't forget!"

And with that, Courfeyrac clapped Grantaire on the shoulder and left the café almost at a jog. At the door, he deftly avoided collision with Combeferre and Enjolras on their way in.

Enjolras was listening to Combeferre with rapt interest, barely nodding at Courfeyrac.

Grantaire they did not see at all, perhaps because the café was crowded. He did not bother to call to them, and so he sat, alone, until at last he had to leave for a lecture.

* * *

By night a white and sullen fog hung over Paris, draped from rooftops and drooping into the streets. Grantaire had only been observing it for a minute, from his window, when the first drops of rain fell silently onto the sill. He sighed hugely, thinking of his leaky window and the inconvenience of trying to sleep through a storm. It was then that the rain took a turn for the torrential. He flinched away from the window as it began to lash down on the street.

Feeling nothing like himself, probably by fault of sobriety, Grantaire dropped into the chair at his desk, unable to ignore the percussion of rain outside. He put his head listlessly in his hands, imagining his misery entirely unique. He thought of old men, in warm beds with their wives, perhaps cracking an eye at the advent of a storm but returning immediately to sleep. Young men, his peers, woken not because of the rain, but by their mistresses' sleepy kisses. Artists, awake, seeing in the storm something magnificent, imagining themselves in Chateaubriand's America. And some who slept decisively alone, dreaming with such determination, that the rain didn't matter.

Grantaire groaned to think that, imagining this last category of men, he had pictured Enjolras.

"What a perfect night to poison myself," Grantaire muttered, dragging himself upright to shut the curtains.

The rain crested against his window, and he jumped at a thunderclap. It broke his resolved good humor, and he fell back into the chair, "I am no Enjolras, I require an end to this—" his voice was harsh in the empty room "—misery, worse than his insanity," and then: "_à moi, Satan_, and hasten our acquaintance a little."

His head dropped almost to his knees. He was grateful to be alone, lolling and miserable, without a bottle to blame.

When he lifted his eyes he saw before him a pair of well-shined boots, poised as if to bow, he realized that he was not, in fact, so alone as he thought.

The chair clattered backwards as Grantaire leapt up, scrabbling at his desk for something threatening. He found a pen.

"Who in all hell—"

"You have it precisely," said the man in the boots, from a deep bow, "_me voici_, Mephistopheles, at your request."

"Ha! Are you really," Grantaire's voice trembled only a little.

"I am."

"Rich! Satan, here in my room. Not stuck in ice gnawing on people, eh? Brutus in particular I imagine tastes foul. Let me guess, you're looking for shelter from the rain. You're welcome to it."

The man smiled tightly. He had a well-tended, spare black moustache, and below his lip a patch of beard like an arrow pointing to the chin. Otherwise he was dressed much like a student; a cranberry-colored waistcoat with a black tailcoat and hat. The pin in his cravat resembled a dagger. His smile turned smug as he said, "What rain?"

The rain had stopped falling.

"You honestly want me to call you Mephistopheles."

"Well, but we aren't doing this for me, are we? I admit I'm surprised. You don't seem to lack for youth. You would like to be handsomer, I imagine, or maybe better-liked, which you could improve by not laughing at men when they've come all this way for you. What is it you want?"

"I—" another time, he would have responded smartly; said he wanted to know what the man was doing in his apartment, or where he got his boots. But only moments ago he had been almost out of his mind with despair. He answered in earnest: "I suppose I don't know."

"Well," said Mephistopheles, peering about the room, and picking up the empty wine bottle precariously near the edge of Grantaire's desk, "you are therefore _highly _irregular. A glass, please?"

"Bottle's empty."

"Nevermind that. A glass?"

Grantaire handed him one, having anticipated the result. With a dark grin and much flourish, Mephistopheles filled it with a dark, pungent wine. Then he set the bottle on the desk, where it made a sloshing thud.

He put the glinting glass into Grantaire's hand.

"Have we a deal?" said Mephistopheles.

"A deal! For what? Of course we haven't got a deal."

The devil frowned. "So we're going to be crass, are we? Nevermind, I don't mind to say it: My offer is to indenture my limitless power to your whim. I offer you my humble servitude, entirely, for everything you want on earth. And below, when the time comes, the reverse."

Grantaire nodded, the wineglass tilting. "You mean, I offer you my humble servitude etc."

"Correct."

"Can't do it, I'm sorry, I've been taught very mercilessly to despise speculation. And what's this? Speculation. I invest all I've got and with no guarantee it'll come to any fruition; just that you'll be around a lot doing your _damnedest_, hah, on my behalf. No good. Thanks, but no good."

Mephistopheles had rather curiously plunging brows, like a Roman actor in the forum, and, like an actor's, they leapt upward to convey surprise. "You want it better-drawn? I say limitless power, and of course I mean it. You are miserable, sir, you are utterly miserable (if you don't mind me saying), and that isn't any way to live. Have you ever known what it is to be happy?"

Grantaire frowned. "I am a devout cynic. There is no such condition under the sun."

The dark eyes gave the impression of furnaces, scorching Grantaire in some intangible way. "There are moments so precious that men would give anything to prolong them. Anything to exist, slack-jawed and rapt, thinking one thing, forever. That is happiness; if you've read your Milton you'll understand that, despite taste, I _know_ it."

Grantaire, thinking of things he couldn't express, was caught by that simple argument: you could be happy. There seemed to be nothing to lose that would be missed. "Fine," he said, "instant I want to make a moment last forever, you're welcome to collect. Though I'm tough from a lifetime of ugly loutishness, so I could probably recommend an easier target."

"And waste my gifts by refusing a challenge? Of course not. Drink your wine, and I have drawn up some documents here for your signature."

* * *

END OF CHAPTER ONE NOTES

1. Mme de Taillandier is indeed a name taken from François Taillandier, Writer for l'Humanité Extraordinaire. But that's utterly irrelevant, I needed a made up name for this made up and completely irrelevant lady.

2. I know that once upon a time, Victor Hugo wrote a really great book, full of good morals and bitter social commentary, but for whatever reason, I cannot shake the image that the Musain is Central Perk and the Amis are the cast of Friends. And they all just hang out their all the time, each episodic day of their lives.

3. Grantaire is not a suffering intellectual. He is not the victim of a divine bet. Why, then, is Grantaire as deeply depressed as any Faust? I hope to elaborate in future chapters. I hope that is satisfactory, but really I am vastly unhappy with this scene...

4. "à moi, Satan" … "me voici" are from Gounod's Faust, which you have to admire for getting straight to the point.

5. "Not stuck in ice gnawing on people"… this reference to Dante's Divine Comedy, is literally here only for the benefit and amusement of Our Wonderful Mod at Abaissé.

6. I take from both operas the convention of Mephistopheles wearing loads of red.

7. In every Faustian story, there's always this weird part where Satan taps wine out of a table or a signpost or something. Here, he refills Grantaire's empty bottle, proving that he is 1. the real thing and 2. totally lame

8. "Anything to exist, slack-jawed and rapt, thinking one thing, forever." More Augustinian than Miltonian, but it's there a little little bit.

...AND IN THE NEXT CHAPTER: They go to a ball.


End file.
